What is compiler, linker, loader?

Question

I wanted to know in depth meaning and working of compiler, linker and loader. With reference to any language preferably c++.

Answer 1

Compiler:

It will read source file which may be of type .c or .cpp etc and translates that to .o file called as object file.

Linker:

It combines the several .o files which may be generated for multiple source files into an executable file (ELF format in GCC). There are two type of linking:

• static linking
• dynamic linking

Loader:

A program which loads the executable file to the primary memory of the machine.

---

For an in-detail study about the these three stages of program execution in Linux, please read this.